Fostering Death (16 page)

“You want me to tell Ramon to stay over a few hours to help out?” the second shift foreman asked.

“Don’t look like he managed to get too much done on his own shift,” John said, holding the clipboard up. “And where is he, anyhow? I was out in shipping and back in the warehouse. I didn’t see him either place. Or his lift.”

The other foreman shrugged.

John turned to me. “Don’t matter how it happened. We just got to deal with it. Jesse, you’re on the clock as of when you punched in. Go get a lift and report to the dispatch office for the shipping lists. And start picking that stock.”

“Okay. Am I looking for those printouts or what?”

“Nope. They called in a dispatcher to try to straighten everything out. There should be a real live person there who can give you the packing lists. And you can ask questions if you need to. Let him—or her—set the priorities. I’ll take care of what I can in the shop with a hand lift.”

I nodded and hurried off to pick up a forklift.

As I stepped into the charging bay, I stopped short. Nobody but the lift drivers, and maybe a foreman, should be there at this time of the night. But three men stood there in front of the big exhaust fan. One handed a fat blunt to another.

Clay, who ran a plater on my shift, looked me up and down. “What’s the matter, snitch, all yer orange jumpsuits in the wash?”

Damn Aaron. He’d told Clay I was a snitch, maybe to divert suspicion away from himself. It seemed like Clay believed him. And probably spread the false rumor to half the shift.

The spot where the men huddled, between the charging forklifts and the wall, was poorly lit and just out of range of a security camera. I caught a whiff of the mixed tobacco and marijuana.

Clay stepped out into the edge of the light cast by the overhead fixtures, slipping his hands into the heavy work gloves plater operators wore. He planted his boots on the floor and slammed his right fist into his left hand. The thick fabric muffled the slapping sound.

I was just trying to do my job. I didn’t want any trouble. Geez, I couldn’t afford any trouble. In less than a week, I’d be through the probationary employment period and in the union. Until then, any problem and I could be fired, no questions asked. If Clay and his buddies would just let me alone, I’d be more than willing to take a lift and get out of there.

Didn’t look like they were going to make it that easy. One of them snuffed out the blunt they’d been smoking and shoved it into his shirt pocket. They stepped out from behind the lifts, standing behind Clay, their faces tense and their fists clenched by their sides.

“You got something to say, jailbird?” Clay asked.

Ignoring them was not going to work. I backed up a few steps, into the middle of the bright light and closer to the security camera. I narrowed my eyes and set my face into the prison yard stare that had served me well for years.

One of the guys, a big, lardy fellow named Ramon who drove a lift four to midnight, shifted his feet, a worried frown on his face.

Clay tensed and brought his fists to mid-chest level. “You think you can take all three of us?” he asked. “Just try.”

I continued to stare, my hands by my sides. “I’m sure not gonna violate parole for wusses like you.” Any type of fight, no matter who started it, could be grounds for a parole violation. And I’d be on my way back to prison.

Veins on Clay’s neck stood out and his face turned red. “I’ll show you who’s a wuss.” He took a step forward.

Never back down. If I had to fight, at least I’d make a good showing. I nodded my head and raised my fists. “Bring it.” I glanced away from them for a second, up at the security camera, then resumed my stance. I hoped the camera was recording—it might help if Mr. Ramirez could see a video that showed I wasn’t the aggressor. Slim hope, but better than nothing.

Ramon followed my glance and lowered his hands. “Come on, Clay. We don’t need to start no trouble here at work. Besides, he looks like he already been in a fight.”

Clay didn’t want to drop it. “He just called us wusses.”

“So? I don’t want to get fired over something stupid like that.” Ramon tugged at Clay’s elbow.

“We can settle this outside work,” the other guy, Marcus, said, dropping his fists.

“You gonna meet us at Mickey’s after work?” Clay demanded, naming a bar a few blocks down the street from the plant.

I laughed. “Yeah, right. So you can call my PO and report it? And have the cops standing by? You really think I’d go into a bar? If I was gonna violate, I’d get the satisfaction of wiping up the floor with your sorry asses. Gotta be some PCP or something in them blunts you been smoking there.”

“Come on, Clay.” Ramon pulled him a few steps toward the entrance to the warehouse. “We got enough to worry about. If he reports us, he reports us. We can deny it. Who’re they gonna believe?”

Marcus glanced up at the camera. “Yeah. Let’s not make it worse. Especially when it might be recorded.”

Shaking my head, I laughed again. “You don’t got to worry about
me
reporting nothing. I ain’t no snitch.” Stepping around them to reach the forklifts, I steeled myself to turn my back to them like I knew none of them would throw a sucker punch at my head. I knew no such thing. The muscles in the small of my back tensed, expecting a punch to land any second.

While I unplugged the lift and started to run it through check-off sequence, I strained to hear if the boot-steps were retreating. To my relief, they were.

They stopped as they reached the door. I tensed again but continued checking the gauges on the dashboard.

“You just wait. We’ll make sure you’re sorry,” Marcus shouted from the relative safety of the doorway.

I wanted to say, “Sorry for what?” but I ignored them.

Swinging my stiff body up into the seat, I switched on the ignition. The forklift’s silent electric engine vibrated to life. I shifted into reverse and eased it out from between two others.

“You just do that,” I couldn’t resist hollering to Marcus as I swung around and drove a bit faster than necessary toward them.

They ducked down an aisle. I continued out the door and down the passageway toward shipping where we needed to get the loads organized.

Kelly was already there, standing next to her bigger forklift, which was used primarily for loading and unloading over-the-road tractor trailers. Her brow was furrowed as she looked at the papers in her hand.

Seeing Kelly always stirred something in my gut and left me short of breath. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail that flowed from beneath her hardhat and brushed her ample rear. Her sweatshirt didn’t hide the expanse of her breasts. I knew the feel of the iron muscles that hid under her soft-appearing skin.

I approached her cautiously. Sometimes Kelly treated me like I was the boyfriend I wished I was. Other times she was curt and distant with me. And we hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms when I’d left her place on Friday.

I eased the lift up next to her and climbed down. “What have we got?” I asked, hoping she’d be in a good mood.

Her dark eyes blazed as she looked at me. “What the hell do they think they’re doing?” She waved the papers at me.

“You got me there.” At least her anger didn’t seem aimed at me. I wondered if I could ask her about the weekend.

“They’re supposed to get all this crap together on first shift. Or second at the latest. We only got two drivers—you and me—and all the regular work’s got to be done.”

Not exactly the moment to go into a “What are you doing Saturday night?” conversation.

I held out my hand, and she gave me the shipping lists. They weren’t exactly like the old kind, but they weren’t the confusing multi-page ones the computer printed out, either. We should be able to handle this.

“Why don’t I take these and pull the stock from the warehouse,” I said. “I’ll line them up by the truck bays in groups, and as soon as I get one done, I’ll tape the paperwork on the last pallet. Then you and the truck driver can check over them before you load them.”

“And just who’s going to take care of supplying the machine operators while you’re assembling shipments?” she demanded.

“John told me to concentrate on getting these out,” I said. “He’ll keep an eye on who needs what, and if he can’t get it moved with a handlift, he’ll find me.”

Kelly flexed her fingers in her gloves. “This is gonna take a while.”

I shrugged. “Yeah. But we got all night, and the shift hasn’t even started yet. It’s mostly root baskets and tomato cages, so it isn’t that bad.” Root baskets and tomato cages mostly went to wholesale plant nurseries. They weren’t heavy and couldn’t be stacked, so we’d only need a single layer for each truck. And they weren’t easily damaged, so we could work quickly.

“Root baskets and tomato cages?” A faint smile played on Kelly’s luscious lips. “A rush order for root baskets and tomato cages?”

I grinned back. “It’s not really rush orders, I don’t think. Just stuff that the new system lost. Probably they didn’t even realize they were due to ship tonight until a trucker called for instructions or something.”

A genuine smile played on her face. “Probably,” she agreed. “I was worried it was something I’d done. Missed instructions last night or something.”

“Nah. Even if we tried, we couldn’t mess up like this.”

She laughed. “We don’t have enough authority to manage that.”

“True, that.” I got back on my lift and tucked the edge of the paperwork under my butt so it wouldn’t blow away. Maybe later in the shift, if we managed to get everything loaded and the trucks out before six, I could ask her about the weekend.

I headed out of shipping, past the plating line and skimmed the edge of the production floor, driving carefully. Shift change was getting close. The workers on my overnight shift milled around near the time clock, waiting for John to give them assignments. The second shift crew pushed to meet their quotas, the welding rigs throwing sparks and the presses thundering incessantly. The scent of hot steel and oil filled the air.

I passed Clay, heading out toward the plating room. He stepped well back from the center of the passageway, glaring at me. I wondered if he thought I might try to hit him. I was tempted to swerve toward him, but even I realized that would be pretty juvenile so I just ignored him. He gestured toward me, probably flipping me the bird, but I didn’t check to see.

Ramon, the lift driver for the four to midnight, cut ahead of me and headed toward the charging stations. I eased my speed back even more. No point in taking any chances.

The whistle blew, signaling shift change.

Back in the warehouse, I had to move a lot of pallets to get to the root baskets and tomato cages. They were seasonal items, and if I was going to rotate the stock like I was supposed to, I’d have to get to the ones way at the back. Oily dust lay thick on everything. I doubted anyone had been so far down these aisles in the last six months.

I needed two pallets of the largest root baskets. They were huge, big enough to handle large trees for commercial projects like shopping centers where they wanted the landscaping to look mature from day one. Good to know some places were still building projects like that in this economy.

The beep of a backing forklift sounded in the next aisle. With Kelly out in shipping, there shouldn’t be another lift around. Had John relented and asked Ramon to work a bit of overtime? I could do without that kind of help.

Picking up the front pallet of tomato cages to move so I could reach the older stock, I eased it down the aisle toward the back end of the row.

A stack of piled crates came crashing down into the space I had just vacated.

Chapter 12

B
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HE
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I got the aisle cleared enough to go look, the lift and whoever had been driving it were gone. I didn’t know whether it had been someone carelessly backing into a stack of crates and afraid to stick around to accept responsibility for a potentially dangerous accident, or a deliberate attempt to hurt me. Since I wasn’t hurt and I didn’t see any real damage done, I decided not to report it to John. No point turning into a snitch now.

Kelly and I worked hard all shift, cutting our breaks and lunches short. By the time the eight a.m. whistle blew, all the trucks that were supposed to be loaded were checked out and on their way. The day shift foreman griped about the low supplies of parts by some of the work stations, but John dealt with that.

Exhausted and sore, I hurried home, took a shower, and fell into bed. Errands and shopping would have to wait.

I slept all day and woke up in the early evening. I was hungry and stiff, but otherwise felt pretty good. I fixed some ramen noodles and tried to sort out my thoughts.

My next appointment with the parole office was fast approaching. If Belkins had followed through with his threat to request I be put back on home detention—and I had no reason to think he would not—I would have very limited time outside my apartment in the coming weeks. A depressing thought. Not to mention that paying the monitoring fee would put a crimp in my already tight budget.